DeeVee

Something a lot of people forget is that P&G wanted to get out of the soap opera biz. (Which is why I was SHOCKED when I found out BTG is a P&G soap). The networks also had decided that soaps were too expensive, that it was much cheaper to produce game/talk/lifestyle shows. They weren't totally wrong about that. During the 80s and early 90s, soaps became very opulent, with frequent location shoots, huge casts, storylines that required big, grand scenes, and stars who got big money. But as soap viewing habits changed, they couldn't sustain it. Instead of rethinking soaps, maybe going back to a simpler way of making them (like perhaps reducing them to half an hour), they just decided to ditch them. Over at ABC, it is my belief that Brian Frons was hired basically to sabotage their soaps. AMC and OLTL didn't die. They were killed. Yes, what they did with GL the last few years reeked of desperation, (and yes, a lot of it turned out awful) but at least they were trying to find some way to save it. They had nothing left but experimentation, and it's possible they could have eventually found the way for soaps into the future. Wheeler made the same mistakes a lot of other shows made, i.e. taking focus away from vets for younger characters. But the vets cost more, and bean counters are going to bean count. I think most of the people working on it knew how dire the situation was and that's why they agreed to pay cuts. They were trying to save their show! KZ, being in her 50s and thinking she still should be the star of the show (IMO, soaps are better when they are an ensemble) is kind of insane. Maybe she was thinking of the grand dames of the older soaps, like Mary Stuart. But they played matriarchs, and she never really wanted to play that part, she still wanted to be the romantic lead. If she had gone along with everyone else, would it have saved the show? Extremely unlikely. The soaps were in a death spiral, so no one can blame her for that. But it doesn't make her look very good.

You're not asking me, but I'll tell you, anyway. Judith Light. She was amazing at these kinds of scenes. At the opposite end, Sara Felder on Ryan's Hope. Even though I liked her as Siobhan, every time she started to cry, I would be like, "Oh, God, lower the volume." 😁

They were a perfect example of how soaps sabotage themselves by having "bad" characters doing extreme things for a short-term shock factor. If he hadn't deliberately caused the death of her baby, they could have been one of the most amazing soap couples. Their chemistry was off the charts. My mom and I at the time were like, "Nooooo, they can't get together, but OMG, if only it could be plausible that they get together!" They could have had him do plenty of villainous stuff without crossing that line. It boggles the mind that no one stopped to think this was a bad idea. You had two incredibly attractive, sexy actors with obvious chemistry. His character's whole schtick was hating the brother who had everything HE wanted. Of course he would want his woman, too! And then genuinely falling for her? It's a classic trope and the kind of thing viewers eat up with a spoon. But at that point it was too icky to become a long-term story.

There are writers whose work I love on one show but find their work on another show abysmal. There are probably a lot of factors that can cause this phenomenon: who the EP is, the network it's on, if they have to deal with a sponsor, what condition the show is in when they take over, if there's a big star's ego that needs to be accomodated, etc. I loved AW during the Harding Lemay years but never saw another soap he wrote that I thought was any good.

This is funny to me because I deeply resented Long back in the day. In hindsight, I feel that I was very unfair to her. For one thing, some of the decisions that upset me were probably not hers. We know a lot of the firings were Kobe's work. When she was left alone to do her thing she could write very good stories. The women characters were much more complex and interesting than they were under Marland. She was very good at using backstory to propel and enhance the present story. She created some incredible characters, like Billy, Mindy, and Alex. We ding Zimmer here incessantly, but as long as Reva was just one of an ensemble, I really enjoyed her character. When she left the first time, the drop in quality in the show was SO apparent. So, yeah, I feel now like she deserves credit for keeping GL up there, and certainly was not the villain who crashed it.

I think her FEELINGS were 100% valid. She had every right to be upset and angry. Oprah was also being totally unprofessional. She should not have been fangirling over the ABC people. The way she handled it was wrong, though. Not just unprofessional, but kind of childish. What she should have done was gotten the attention of the producer (who was also not doing their job) during one of the breaks and complained. That would have solved the issue without histrionics.

Huh? I never got that impression from Billy and Reva. They always played to me like he had been Reva's consolation prize because she couldn't have Josh. (Don’t even get me started on the HB thing). Confirmation? 😂 Was he on the show for so long because SHE liked him? O.K., I doubt she had THAT much power, but if by his own admission he couldn't act the part, why was he kept in the role for 15 years? SO unprofessional. Good grief.

Thanks to all who helped fill in Dinah's origin. I found another source that said Gatti started June 1986, so me thinking she encountered GA's Phillip in one of her first scenes is obviously some kind of brain blip on my part. It's hard to know what was intended because one writer may have planned for Dinah to be their daughter and another for it to be Jessie. Is there any other character who went through more personality flips than Dinah? She starts as the tough runaway orphan with Gatti, then is recast with Paige Turco and becomes a sweet ingenue. Then she's written out and her personality changes AGAIN when she comes back. I believe she changed even more times after that. So weird.

This show desperately needs some love stories. Two people meeting, having sex, and announcing they are a couple within days is not a story. MAYBE they plan something to happen to turn it into a story, but the joy of watching a soap love story is the longing, the obstacles, the build up to WANTING to see them get together. Perhaps this is going to be a blip, with Chelsea disillusioned again, which may lead to an actual big romance for her. I hope so, because this by itself isn't very compelling.

Uh... Garrett aged beautifully, WTH was she talking about? That's nice to know about Beverlee. It's tough to be a woman, especially an older woman, in the industry, but there are examples that show you don't have to be a jerk to thrive.

Had some thoughts watching the return of RN/Josh: Dammit. Josh and Reva work. There's just no denying it. There's incredible chemistry. The emotions between them seem honest and real. It's not surprising they were a thing through the rest of the life of the show. That said: Josh is not, never has been, and never will be the sharpest tool in the shed. 😂 The least surprising thing ever is him walking right into the villain's lair. The guy's practically wearing a sign that says, "I'm the bad guy." I like how strong they made Mindy in the post-Kurt's death era. O.K., jumping an armed assassin was a little over the top, but she seemed to grow up finally and it looked good on her. As much as it ticked off the Kyle fans, and how this was dictated by Malloy's upcoming exit, I really like that Reva stayed so firm about breaking off with him. No wavering, no doubt that she wants to be with Josh. If they had gone the love triangle route, she probably would have been more wishy-washy about it. The other stories: ugh. Billy wanting to divorce Vanessa to save their marriage is so stupid. The high school crap, the young adult crap--yeah, they wanted to attract younger viewers, but this wasn't the way to do it. I forgot that Dina had been in the show for quite some time before the reveal she was Vanessa and Ross's daughter. I could be misremebering this, but I thought one of Dina's earliest scenes was with Phillip while he was still played by Grant Alexander, and now he's about to return to the show and they still haven't had the reveal. Maybe someone can correct or confirm that? Now I'm wondering if Dina was always meant to be their daughter. Who knows with the zillion writer changes.

MAYBE what possibly happened is they decided to give the story they would have given to Kyle to Alan instead. It could have just as easily been Kyle who dicked around with the DNA tests, who could have brought Sonni back and conspired with her to keep Reva and Josh apart. It saved them from a possible unsuccessful recast and they also saved money on another major character. (The irony is Bernau had to leave and they ended up with an unsuccessful recast with Pilon, but no one would have foreseen that). I don't think there was anyone in the audience who wanted Reva and Alan together, while Reva and Kyle had a fanbase. But without Malloy, that could have changed. Which could be another reason why the decided not to bring Kyle back. I never understood why they didn't do a Josh/Reva/Kyle triangle. Seemed like a no-brainer. But if Malloy wanted to leave, that explains it. My mom was the one watching the show more regularly than me at the time, so I could have been going on what she recounted to me. Memory is a funny thing!

When Maeve was on AW, she was not a star. Angie was an expendable character, while ES and KZ were the de facto stars of their respective shows. Maeve wasn't a diva or a star, but she was a popular entity on GL, so the power dynamic had changed. That may have been another reason she agreed to return.

I never doubted that Blake really loved Ross, but she sure did love living on the edge. 😂 I hope you get around to seeing the 80s version of Alan, particularly his dealings with Roger back in the day. It's not that Alan was a good guy back then, but he was far more complex and not a cartoon villain, and Bernau's portrayal was iconic, just like Zaslow's. It was amazing to watch the two of them go against each other. Ron Raines' version of Alan was not great. You have to partly blame the writing for the character, but Raines IMO wasn't up to the task. Never could understand how he lasted that long in the role.

They got SO far away from Beth in the latter part of BC's run. You can make the argument that Beth had gone through some serious trauma, which could have explained some of the things she did. It was just weird that Beth went from the ideal girl next door to an extremely neurotic woman with a very problematic love life. Hmmm... this puts an interesting light on something else she mentioned in the Locher Room. She said Elvera Roussel came up to her and said, "Don't worry, this is the NICE soap opera set." (Something like that). I wonder if she meant that she didn't need to worry about that kind of thing at GL.

After all his wailing over his son and how important it was to be a present father, he basically abandons him. They put the character in a coma to explain why he wasn't in SF questioning the paternity of Reva's baby (they had Sally take over that task). And how close he and Billy supposedly were...they could have handled it so much better. They should have just killed him off (which they did eventually off screen). !!!! That whole thing was a total abomination. Maybe she wanted to showcase her singing? (But she's not being judge as a singer... I don't get it). Interesting how she talked about the year being hard--probably a reference to the EP change/multiple writer changes. Couldn't have been easy for any of the cast and crew. Yes. We did. Honestly, though, I personally hated the time travel story a lot more. Having Alan and Olivia turn up as Nazis in the past was so gross. The big lesson she learned from that experience? "Trust your heart." 🤢 These storylines were just a way to have her suck up a lot air time. Reva was Where Is Waldoing all over the place during her first absence. They couldn't just have her wash up on the Florida coast with amnesia. NO, she had to end up as the princess of a fictional kingdom and then go Amish! (Not to be pedantic, but it was Reva's mom Sara who insisted she saw Reva in the Italian travelogue).

Oh, no--it's mere MINUTES after dumping Kyle at the wedding. She's still in her wedding get-up when she's calling out for Joshua! It had to be close because of the upcoming who's the daddy story, but the fact that she goes from being madly in love with Kyle to being madly in love with Josh in a New York minute is wild. If it had been revenge sex, or Reva had mixed up the dates of her cycle, that would have made more sense. But it's like they were saying to the audience, "Hey, we were just kidding with this Kyle/Reva thing, that was a placeholder until we could get Robert Newman back!"

So I'm watching the episode with the car crash that kills Chelsea's fiancee--and who should turn up as a nurse at Cedars but Fiona Hutchinson! I had no idea she was on the show before playing Jenna. They really tried to sell Chelsea as the "wild" Reardon, and she turned out to be pretty dull. 😂 The other funny thing about this episode was Reva and Kyle planning their wedding, with two of Reva's ex-husbands in the wedding party. Totally normal!

Even though I watched many of these episodes going all the way back to the late 1970s, it's weird now to see how many characters are in scenes compared to soaps today. They have literal crowds of non-speaking extras in scenes sometimes. There are way more minor speaking parts. I feel like saying, "Are you sure you can afford all those people?" 😁

I just watched the episode with the memorial for Beth's faux death, and now I'm SEETHING. SO much more care and thought put into it than Bert's. They used flashbacks! There was even a RESHOT scene with Bolger so they could show the prom! (Maybe that was shot for a previous episode, but even so!) A big dramatic moment when Jackson walked in uninvited! REAL memories from characters who had REAL dealings with Beth, not people who barely knew her! (The one idiotic moment--Phillip being notified his book was going to be published. That "book" that was dramatized was so awful it was funny.) So now Bert's memorial seems like an even bigger misfire. What a huge lack of respect for the lady who anchored the show for decades.

Yep. Even as a fan of their romance, I was enough of a veteran soap viewer by then to know happy couples get back-burnered and that the show needed Alan free from certain norms so he could drive story. What you're describing is very much what I thought needed to be done--they could have been GL's version of Mac and Rachel. Frequently breaking up, finding new loves, but always having a connection.

At least the Alan and Hope fans didn't send in death threats. 😂 They made her Amish for a while, which was close!

It's almost the same thing that happened when they wrote out Maureen. They gave Dolan the best storyline of her tenure in order to write her out, when if they had NOT written her out, it would have given her character a new life and direction. While the Hope exit storyline was very rushed and poorly motivated in order to get her out (by the end of her contract, I would assume) if it had been properly set up and executed, it could have been really good. In fact, I would argue that the final story they gave her was probably much closer to what the Dobsons originally planned for Alan and Hope. Watching the final two months they wrote GL again many years later, I get the impression that they were setting up Hope for a fall, that Alan was going to do to her the same as he did to every woman before her. Of course, this it total speculation, but I think what kind of backs up this opinion is what the Dobsons did with the Barbara/James and Margo/James storylines when they moved over to ATWT. There are some obvious parallels with the Alan and Hope story. Barbara and James even fall in love on a tropical island. Both women become disillusioned by James and end up much stronger because of it. Barbara changes from sweet ingenue to a formidable woman, and Margo becomes a cop. I think that was their original plan for Hope (not have her become a cop, LOL, just a stronger person). Back then (please remember I was only 19 years old) I wanted very much for Alan and Hope to be together and be a real romantic couple. I think I was far from the only audience member who felt that way. Marland said he would read viewer mail and he must have picked up on that audience wish, so he decided to treat them as a romantic story. Both were valid story choices, in my opinion, and I give Marland credit for keeping Alan as Alan (keeping secrets from Hope, cheating on her, etc.) while still writing a love story for them. But he ended up writing them into a corner, so it's not at all surprising subsequent writers decided to break them up. You can see the groundwork for that starting soon after Marland left, even before Kobe and Long took over. The big mistake was writing Hope out permanently, of course. There was another mention of her in one of the 1986 episodes. It really does seem like they were considering bringing her back, but I guess they eventually decided to bring only Alan Michael back instead.

I remember watching soaps with my mom as far back as the mid-60s. She was a big ATWT fan, but she watched many other shows: DOOL, Love of Life, Another World, and she ADORED Edge of Night. (She ALWAYS figured out the murderer and would spoil it for me--I would be SO mad!) We watched the premiere epsisode of Y&R together. I remember watching General Hospital when it was little more than a nurse's station set. It had elevator doors that would open and people would occasionally come out. That was it, that was the set. I was a little kid and thought that was hilarious. Of course it was black & white back then. Dark Shadows was the only show we didn't watch together--that was MY show. And of course GL. She got me into it during the mid-70s because she had a crush on Michael Zaslow.

GH: The Ice Princess Ryan's Hope: Merit Kara One Life to Live: The City of Eterna! OMG, you've reminded me of the reliquary story on Y&R. Every time a soap starts an art theft story, I think, "Oh, God, we're in for 6 months of torture." The 1986 GL episodes being uploaded now are the beginning of their art theft story. 😩